Since January last year, records obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin show at least $121,000 in tickets purchased by university officials sat unused for so long that airlines wiped them off the books for good.

UW-Madison, the state’s flagship public university, was the biggest spender, tallying 139 expired tickets valued at nearly $70,000. UW-Milwaukee also took a big chunk of the statewide total with 63 tickets valued at nearly $22,000.

But no four-year campus across the UW System had a perfect record on booking flights without waste. Each allowed at least one ticket to expire in the past year and a half, and most racked up more than $1,000 in bills.

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin obtained records detailing the number and cost of expired airline tickets under government transparency laws at a time when the UW System has come under greater financial pressure due to state funding cuts and a tuition freeze for Wisconsin residents. Earlier this month the system’s governing board hiked student fees by an average of $59 per pupil.

Though records show the UW System rarely allows airline tickets to expire and the associated cost pales in comparison to its overall $6.2 billion annual budget, losses can add up. The $121,000 wasted since January last year is roughly equivalent to the average annual salary of a UW-Madison professor or two UW-Stevens Point associate professors.

Such waste isn’t limited to the UW System, however. State agencies have allowed nearly $20,000 in airline tickets to expire since December 2014, according to travel records obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. The total extent of waste in state agencies may be higher. Gov. Scott Walker’s administration said its travel statistics cover “only a portion” of state-funded airfare — flights purchased under the state’s travel contract — and it was unable to produce records showing all expired tickets since 2014.

Better tracking of expired tickets and the causes behind them is one reason the UW System switched to a single vendor for booking travel in 2013. But UW officials don’t view the current amount of waste as a huge problem.

“It’s pretty darn small,” said Martha Kerner, a top UW-Madison budget official. “Emergencies come up. I believe our faculty staff are good-intentioned when they book a trip.”

UW-Madison alone has booked at least $16.9 million in flights since January last year while the rest of the UW System has booked at least $11.1 million in flights, according to travel records. These figures don’t include an additional $2 million in athletics-related flights across the UW System.

How tickets expire

An expired ticket can represent a missed opportunity to wisely use public dollars or depending on the viewpoint, an unavoidable cost of doing business.

The chain of events starts with an unused ticket. UW System officials haven’t studied why tickets go unused but cited event cancellations, illnesses and job candidate withdrawals as a few possible scenarios.

Airlines then give a credit to the UW System that can be used to purchase flights for up to a year after the original booking. If the credit expires, the original ticket’s value essentially becomes wasted.

Alex Hummel, a UW System spokesman, said using credits from unused tickets isn’t always possible due to airline restrictions. Some tickets can’t be transferred to other people so in the case of an external job candidate, the system has few options but to just swallow that loss.

Precisely why 298 tickets were allowed to expire since January last year isn’t clear. Hummel said UW System officials haven’t historically been able to examine the scope of expired tickets because travel records were spread across the state. But now with a centralized approach for booking flights, it may be easier to dig into the issue.

Hummel said he would be interested in looking at the funding behind each flight and whether some were purchased by foundations or through research grants, reducing the amount of taxpayer dollars wasted. However, he said the system doesn’t yet have good statewide data on funding.

UW-Madison details

UW-Madison officials echoed similar challenges in explaining their airfare spending but were able to pull some information for 31 tickets that expired earlier this year. The tickets were collectively valued at $14,600.

The sample showed 14 expired tickets were purchased as gifts to the university or through grants, and in a dozen other cases the funding came from program revenue, such as registration fees for a conference open to the public. Lastly, five flights were either on the public’s dime or the funding source was unclear.

UW-Madison’s sample also provided some insight into why tickets expire. In 17 cases, tickets were purchased for a non-employee, and airlines didn’t allow transferring credits to another person. In another four cases, events were cancelled, but employees weren’t aware that credits for unused tickets were available to them.